Heaven's Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

that it was a missal, flawlessly penned and illuminated. Turning to the last page, he found the scribe’s signature enclosed in a wreath of twisting vines: Constance me fecit .
    Rainulf blinked and read the words again, then whispered them out loud. “Constance made me. Constance? ” He glanced toward the bedchamber’s leather curtain, beyond which the ever-more-singular Constance lay in a fevered stupor.
    “Nay...” Replacing that volume, he slipped out another—a thick little breviary with minuscule writing on tissue-thin parchment—and flipped to the end. Shaking his head in disbelief, he read the words out loud: “Completed by Constance of Cuxham, 18 April 1159.”
    The largest of the newer books turned out to be the most unusual. Rather than leather, it was bound in wooden boards, which had been covered with fancifully embroidered linen, on which was stitched the title Biblia Pauperum . A Bible for the poor? On the last page he found the legend De una manu , and under it, the English translation: By one hand. Beneath that appeared the twisting vine device, enclosing Con-stance’s name and a recent date. Clearly she was proud of her work, and why shouldn’t she be? On leafing through the oversize volume, he discovered it to be an elaborately illustrated album of Bible stories, with quotations from the prophets... in English !
    Rainulf chuckled incredulously. English. She must have written this one herself. To have conceived of such a project was remarkable. To have actually executed it, in such ambitious fashion...
    A moan from beyond the leather curtain interrupted his reverie. Tucking the book back into its slot, he hurried into the bedchamber, to find Constance thrashing and yanking at her bedclothes, her flushed face glazed with perspiration, her eyes wild.
    He touched her cheek, and she shook him off, but not before he felt how feverish she’d become. He growled a raw oath and crossed himself. Rushing outside, he drew a bucket of water, found a clean cloth, and returned to bathe her face and throat as he sat on the side of the bed.
    After a while, her senses returned. She even smiled. “I can still see,” she said hoarsely, her eyes half-closed. “Father?”
    “Aye?”
    “Would you give me last rites?”
    Rainulf held the cloth over the bucket and twisted it hard in his fists, wringing out every last drop until his hands trembled.
    He drew a deep breath. “Of course,” he said as her eyes drifted closed again. “I’ll get what I need.”
    *   *   *
    Constance heard her name whispered. Opening her eyes with some effort, she saw Father Rainulf, once again looking every bit the man of God in his white surplice and stole. Warm yellow lantern light provided the only illumination in the room, since it was night. On the bedside table, she saw, neatly laid out on a linen cloth, the items required for the sacrament of Extreme Unction. Her heart raced, and she felt queasy. She hadn’t thought she was afraid of death, but now that it hovered so close, she wasn’t so sure.
    His large, cool hand closed over hers, and he squeezed gently. It aggravated the burning sensation, but felt so comforting that she was loath to ask him to release her. “Are you up to making confession?”
    Constance nodded. Summoning all her strength, she confessed in a clear voice to her sinful relationship with Father Osred, but felt obliged to add, “It’s not as if I was sinning all that much. I mean, Father Osred was an old man. And old men... well...” She shrugged.
    “Yes, well...”
    “I mean, it’s been months since he’s wanted to—”
    “Yes. I under—”
    “And even before that, it was hardly what you’d even call sinning , if by sinning one means the pleasures of the flesh, because as far as pleasure was concerned—”
    “You’re forgiven, Constance. It’s all right.” His ears, Constance noted, had turned pink again.
    Father Rainulf anointed her eyes, ears, lips, and hands with consecrated oil, his